Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisa
I understand why some folks may want to shop in a physical bookstore and then buy the ebook, but that purchase could just involve emailing you a download link. There's no reason it has to involve physical media. If your device can connect to a network and synch, you wouldn't even need to do that. Turn on the wireless and there's your book. I think most technophobic people would prefer that to SD cards.
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The advantage would be to stores--so a customer could walk in, browse, pick half a dozen books, purchase the ebook versions & have them loaded on a card at checkout--and load that card into their reader immediately. This is potentially most useful for tourists and people who are visiting a bookstore that's normally outside of their travel range.
One card per book does seem a bit much, but plenty of people would be willing to pay an extra $5 for the card if they were buying several books. Stores could have pre-loaded collections: complete Lord of the Rings, or the entire Wheel of Time series, or whatever.
The hitch, and the real reason this won't happen--it would take non-DRM'd books (or a form of DRM tied to the card itself rather than the reader), and it'd be ridiculously easy for customers to give away or resell the cards later. And the publishers really don't want to do *anything* that would create an actual used ebook market.